by Jani Griot
Looks like I can’t hide from you.
The boy’s words slipped into her mind. He crossed his arms, slowly shook his head, then bowed. Soft laughter paraded through her mind as his figure darted off.
The world swirled back into the natural spectrum and a wave of nausea washed over her. Beads of sweat rolled across and down her head as she tried to hold in the sickness.
She gripped each of the twins by the shoulder as she barged between them, stopping herself from pitching over entirely. The redhead and brunette took up defensive positions near the blonde.
She focused to control her breath, which was trapped until she could gasp for more air that wouldn’t come. She closed her eyes and searched for her focus, her silent rage.
Her mind turned to the life the Honorborn had cast her and the girls around her into. Dressed as boys since birth. Hair cut short to frame the face of each girl in a hope to emulate male features as closely as possible.
She hadn’t cared in her youth and was even proud to be seen as powerful because of her image. The more she was taken across the seas to new lands and exposed to other cultures, the more she despised her upbringing. The more she despised her revered title. Ruse boy. She would now rather fight to the death than let anyone cut her hair and she had the scars to prove it.
With what she knew of her master’s plan for Vassilious Keep, she knew she would finally be free.
Finding the Sun Lion Diamond was more valuable than any secret she could currently offer up to her masters. But she would have to roam the jungles looking for an ancient lost plant with an invisible boy from the Sky Kingdom. This thought stole her normal ferocity and left her apprehensive.
She would have to plan appropriately. The challenges before her filled her with fear. A fear that fed her rage. She was backed into a corner narrower than any other she had been in, and she would not allow for her life or the lives of the girls around her to continue this way.
“I will kill them all,” said the blonde softly. She rolled her shoulders and stood to her full height as her breathing normalized.
“Panic attacks. Dara Vivek has them sometimes, only when she uses far too much univers, though,” said the brunette as she patted her leader on the back. The blonde looked back at her, confused, as she had no idea what the girl was on about. What she did see was the subtle change in the brunette’s smile.
The massive gate at the end of the courtyard opened and stole the attention of everyone in the area. With the exception of the two girls. The brunette stood, her mouth slightly open with an unanswered question on her lips, poised to ask. The blonde only shook her head, leaving the brunette to nod subtly as the crowd moved toward the opening doors. The brunette stood in place until the blonde looked back and gave the girl a wink and a beckoning hand.
“Come on. Let’s go tend to the garden.”
A Hint of Subterfuge
The sandstone walls of the keep surrounded the boy. He walked through the halls of the manor unseen. Dazzling artwork and the finest masterpieces were as easily accessible around him as the air he breathed. Still, as he strode purposefully to fulfill Khalif’s orders, he grew less focused.
Between the festivities and all the people the celebration brought, the young man’s mind swirled with new thoughts and ideas. Yes, he had his orders, and yes, he did have to follow them. But that didn’t mean his own objectives must be thrown aside.
“There isn’t even a damned marketplace. How does the man expect us to sell our goods efficiently?” said a voice around the corner from where the boy was. He slowed before rounding the turn, despite knowing that he would appear as air to them. He had made himself invisible, but not invincible, a lesson he’d learned the hard way having once run too fast during an operation. He could not be seen, but he could be felt.
He peeked around the wall’s edge. Three men stood in a circle, arguing. He took the time to look the men over. Not because their charisma called for attention with fine dress or speech, but because they were in his way, blocking one of the easier paths to Ochloc’s quarters.
“If you were to sell anything in the slave lands, it would be confiscated anyway, both the goods and the profit. The games haven’t served the merchant families of the other kingdoms as more than a way to advertise for almost ten cycles,” said another man. The other two nodded before the last man to speak entered the conversation.
“We are only here due to our connections to royal blood. If it weren’t for our distant family members and house ties, they would treat us no differently than rats,” said the final man. The boy shook his head as he snuck past, trying his best not to laugh at them.
These were the slave lands. The men were ridiculous if they thought they could gain a foothold for trade in this kingdom under its current rule. Not even the well-traveled merchant king, Carter, nor his band of sycophantic plunderers were able to achieve the feat, and they were able to trade with the Sky Kingdom. Something that should have been impossible, due to the Sky Kingdom’s impenetrable gates and its location between the highest realm and the sands.
“Things aren’t even this bad in the kingdom of Aspire,” said one of the men behind the boy as he drew farther down the corridor.
Every kingdom in the land was under threat by the boy’s father. The beings of power that reigned over the sky, sands, and seas had formed a perfect balance of dominion. Until the death of the Sandmaker caused a land grab of literal godly proportions.
The boy had not been born too long before his uncle died, but those events were, nonetheless, engraved into his memory. The god’s death shook every kingdom as no being in the realm should have been powerful enough to kill the Sandmaker, leaving even the boy with his own grander perception of the situation, confused.
He had to shake the thoughts away as he snuck closer to Ochloc’s rooms. His head swam as the univers he used to remain invisible required a steady flow of air and he’d only just caught himself holding his breath as he arrived at the door. The barrier of light reflection flickered as he took his first deep breaths in almost a solid minute.
He stopped himself as voices came from the other side of the door. He was tempted to use another of the many runes he’d seen Khalif conjure during their operations but stopped as he remembered being lit up like the sun during his first attempts at invisibility. He may have wanted to hear what was happening inside more clearly, but accidentally creating a magical horn was also a possibility at his current level of control.
Silks of varying colors streamed throughout the room. The luscious material draped over every window and table and was fitted to most of the furniture. Dara Vivek hated such obvious shows of wealth. The keep no longer resembled her childhood home, which had been crisp and clean, but had not been overrun by ostentatious displays of power. She ran her fingers along the fabric as she walked to the opposite side of the space that had once been her father’s meeting room. She reached the wall at the same time Ochloc took his place on the other side of the room.
“You told me you had already tested the boy,” said Dara. Her tight robes barely moved as she turned and began her casual stride back toward Ochloc. She passed her brother as he responded to her words, rolling her eyes as he matched her pace. Back and forth they went, spanning the room with long legged strides as they spoke.
“You can understand why I kept this from you, sister, as my own bastard child was the only other person to activate the sun cloak,” said Ochloc as their paths crossed again. Their eyes met with understanding. Pure Honorborn did not have the traits often gifted to the slaves of the sands unless those Honorborn happened to be of old-blooded descent. The mixing of godly offspring had long been connected to the destruction of the highest realms. Both siblings knew Ochloc had ignored such dangers when he had fathered two mixed-blooded godlings. And he had done so at a time that was a mere breath after the purge of the old bloods.
Dara suppressed the almost-look of shock she knew her brother would detect. “I thought this relic was referred to
as the Fury’s cloak, being tied to their raging blood line and all. You don’t expect me to believe you’ve had a sun cloak from the Sky Kingdom this entire time.” She looked up to see her brother nod in her direction as they brushed past one another again.
“Let me tell you a truth, sister,” started Ochloc. Dara paused at those words. Ochloc was not inclined to share secrets or truths for any reason other than to enlighten. The keeping of one another’s secrets was a shared trait of theirs that stemmed from their youth, when both were seeking knowledge and power to advance their own statuses. “There isn’t a difference between a sun cloak and a Fury’s cloak. Our father made the cloaks. If you think your wonders are comparable to the relics he constructed or the magics he’d accessed by his death, you are sadly mistaken.”
Dara tensed at that. Her father was known as a savage and a brute, not a scholar. To hear that their father had created things she could not imagine left her dumbstruck. She had always assumed that her gift for the mental arts was a fluke formed within her as an aftereffect of her ascended father’s over-abundance of raw power. Now though, memories of the larger-than-life man fluttered through her mind, being forged from this new perspective, and sculpted into the truth of what the man had been. Her father was never merely a man. He was a god.
“You’re telling me that father was able to forge souls?” she asked. Ochloc only nodded in response. He let more pieces click into place. Dara stood still while he continued to pace to the center of the room, then calmly back by her.
“Father made the relics that we found throughout the kingdom when we were children,” he said. The statement crashed through her mind—her memories—like a tidal wave. She began to pace again, splitting her mind in several directions at once, probing every path that had opened inside her head.
It wasn’t until she began to cycle pure univers through her veins that she detected the storm cloud of energy emanating from outside the door, but she had other things to process at that moment. The chamber grew hotter as she flexed her power. Univers shocked her out of the measured pace of her steps and into a dead sprint.
“Don’t you wish you would have followed me the night I stalked Father into the jungles? Maybe then you wouldn’t have had to steal his scraps. Maybe then you’d have been allowed real insight to the power of our family as I was,” stated Ochloc. “Now you feel entitled to portions of my victory, and you want to use my son in the Sea Sun Games as your own champion, but neither will come to pass.”
The heat of Dara’s anger flooded her chest. She fought to contain it but lost that battle to the fire forming in her veins. Her brother may not have been able to match her wits entirely, but as a tactician and planner, he was undefeated for a reason. Now that he had distorted the situation in his favor there would be a groundswell of chaos.
“With my new favorite weapon, I just may be able to obtain the final piece of the trinity and ascend, myself. Why would I give you the tools to oppose me? Aemillious doesn’t have the blood lust to defeat all the realm’s competition.”
She watched Ochloc smile as flames spread throughout her being and heat filled her face. He didn’t give her a chance to respond before he cut back in, driving the knife of his choices further into the open wound of their shared memories.
“After all, he is my son. I can’t deny that his chances of winning, even if he is my weaker child, reminds me of us, and our own Sea Sun Games,” mocked the king of Vassilious.
“How dare you?” was all Dara could manage through gritted teeth. She drove univers through her body until that burn was all she could feel. The unadulterated fire of it wiped her mind and soul of emotions, as well as the weight such sensations brought with them.
“Dare I? I dare tell a thief to her face that her choices will always fall short of being on the mark for one simple reason; you think too much, and that’s probably why you lost him.”
Dara said nothing in response as he walked by. Anger died within her under the force of univers’ pressure in her chest as the power built, flooding her veins uncontrollably. The mental state the power left her with was one of pure reason. She forced herself into such a state when she wished to avoid facing her darkest memories. She was no longer angry. She was more focused than ever under the effects of pure magic. It worked like a drug in her mortal body—an opiate for the mass of her pain.
Anger could reach her if her focus drifted, but she knew how much univers was required to dull her senses just enough to concentrate and get through the more difficult moments with the king. She paced once again alongside her brother, her right hand gripping the air gracefully at her side as she contemplated how she wanted to defuse her excess energy. She was not wearing her Elementalist gauntlets and the power was slowly eating away at her from the inside. She was wise to force the fire down once more as she and the king passed one another, and his sneer prompted her desire to lunge at him. She didn’t want to die. She wouldn’t die there. She couldn’t. Not when she was so close to seeing her nephew ascend. That ascension had been her goal for many cycles.
She calmed herself. She understood how corruption and revolutions shifted and moved with them those who held power. The silks suddenly felt more present than they had before. Weighted.
Ochloc was powerful. He was a king, and he displayed a master’s command of magic. That was the truth for now. But Dara knew well that it didn’t have to be the truth forever.
She decided on a handful of actions, at once pulling the pieces of her mind back toward the whole of her consciousness. One such action was to not let the slander of her name go entirely undefended. She spoke softly knowing her voice would be filled with power under the effects of univers.
The boy braced himself to continue through this drama.
“You stole as I stole,” came a feminine voice from within the room. He listened through the door’s small keyhole, maintaining his breathing to ensure he would remain unseen. The conversation inside grew in fervor, giving the boy that much more of a need to listen. As the information gained would interest Khalif more if it could be twisted to their benefit. Nothing was more easily twisted than anger.
“You cannot refuse my payment and stake claim to something worth potentially more than anything in the kingdom, to you especially. We both know it. Old-blooded relics in that boy’s hands are akin to blasphemy,” yelled the woman.
“You test my slaves every cycle, something I’ve allowed, every cycle, and now I ask you to let the boy see if he could don the armament, only to be kept if he is able to trigger the univers within. It’s now a problem only because you’ve lost a bit of coin,” said a much more familiar voice. The king laughed as he spoke. The noble man had frustrated whoever it was he was speaking to so thoroughly it made the boy wonder their connection. Only familial bonds could bring such deep emotions to the surface.
“Our terms spoke of coin and honor. Where is the honor in this, brother?” asked the woman the boy now assumed was Dara Vivek.
“There was never a need for you to say no to such an agreement until the sands shifted into my favor today. Do you fear my growth?” said the king.
The boy didn’t have nearly as much knowledge as his older brothers when it came to communication and relationships, but he had a distinct type of intelligence that never left him lost in a situation for more than a few moments. He quickly realized the king was deliberately pressing the woman in ways the man knew would affect her. As to what end, he did not know.
Dara scoffed. “Your growth. Every bit of your potential was given to your daughter,” yelled the woman, trying anything to gain an upper hand, not realizing she was losing herself. She may have been intelligent, but few of the Honorborn remained calm under pressure of any sort.
“That throne you cling to will give the power of a true god to anyone who sits upon it. You may have the grandest wealth in our father’s kingdom, but as the value of the slaves in the slave lands diminishes, so does your power,” roared Dara. The boy looked through the keyhole, wanti
ng to see if their altercation would become physical. The king was known for his lack of guards or service slaves. So the potential for random violence seemed much higher around the king of Vassilious than any of the other amassed leaders in the keep.
The boy had been many places, and none were as easily infiltrated as this keep. It may have been one of the larger keeps he’d been forced to skulk through, but its labyrinthine hallways were easily traversable. Even with its circular maze-like design, with multiple paths leading to the same place. Ochloc’s quarters being one of many such rooms.
From what the boy could glimpse through the small hole; the two were pacing the room as they spoke. Their argument filled the boy with so many questions as he watched them repeatedly cross paths, before walking to opposing ends of the room. A sort of dance they seemed to have done many times before, indicated by how relaxed their postures were. They moved without tension in their shoulders and backs, a posturing the boy never believed he would see on a king, nor his royal blooded sister.
“You disgrace me by turning down my payment, Loc. I would have never left the terms of our payment to one another open to discussion if I would have known you were going to reevaluate…” Dara Vivek trailed off, pausing in her stride across the room.
The boy felt a sensation like frozen water run down his spine before Dara disappeared entirely from the room. Without hesitation the boy stood to run as fast as he could. He wasn’t even able to turn around before a delicate hand wrapped around his neck and lifted him from the floor, displaying strength not normally attached to such soft fingertips.
He felt cold as he and Dara materialized within Ochloc’s quarters. There he was, with the feuding siblings, dangling from the woman’s outstretched grip. The teleportation—in tandem with Dara’s restraint of his air passages—left the boy no choice but to render visible, as he was no longer in control of his breath or circumstance. She rolled her eyes and dropped the boy to the floor.
